"Alright, everyone settle down. Let's get this discussion back on track." Allura ordered, directing a comforting smile at Kurogane and Alejandro, who nodded. The latter's eyes still shone, but the former had wrapped a possessive arm around his partner's waist, which seemed to settle the matter and made Matt smile at the firm support the pair had for each other. She shifted a bit, surveying the group. "I know this is worrisome news, since it means that not only is Haggar's mind control still a threat, but Shiro is not the only one susceptible to it. However, the important thing to remember is that her control can, apparently, be broken." Now her gaze focused entirely on Shiro, and Matt felt the older male stiffen beside him. "Shiro?"
The black paladin hesitated, then shook his head. "I don't know exactly how I threw her off. That isn't even what I was trying to do. I was just trying to resist her control, do something, anything, to keep her from sending me after Lance again."
As Shiro recounted those few critical seconds, from Lance grabbing the black bayard-it turned out he'd thought it was his own, and had been just as surprised as Shiro when the shield activated-through to the moment when the black paladin had turned away to face down Haggar instead, Matt listened in silence with a small frown on his face. Tucked up against his boyfriend's side as he was, the younger man could feel the coiled tension in the other's muscle, see the tightness in his jaw as he spoke. Something was bothering Shiro immensely, and Matt couldn't even begin to guess what was going through the other's mind.
Pidge made an exasperated noise as Shiro finished speaking. "That answers exactly nothing and raises a million more questions. How he threw off the mind control, why he threw it off completely when the other timeline's Shiro didn't," she cast an apologetic look at Kurogane as she ticked off points on her fingers. "How he activated the bayard without touching it, why throwing her off made his arm light up-"
"Although we did learn one thing." Hunk commented, resting his elbows on his knees and looking across Lance at Pidge. "I remember you told me that the technicians freaked out when he powered up the old arm, like it shouldn't have been able to do that. Now we know why. Like Alejandro said earlier, it never was the arm to begin with." The yellow paladin looked over at Shiro and grinned. "Instead it was an aspect this whole-"
"It's not an aspect."
The sharpness of the black paladin's tone as he cut Hunk off made Matt look up at his boyfriend in surprise. He wasn't the only one, the rest of the group casting startled frowns in their direction as well. Shiro's metal hand, still concealed by the glove of his paladin armor, was curled into a tight fist in his lap as he stared down at it.
Hunk raised an eyebrow, looking uncertain. "But…what else could it be?" He asked slowly.
The fist tightened until the glove fabric squeaked. "I don't know. But it's not an aspect. The first time my arm lit up was months before I ever left the arena. Long before I came back to Earth and went to Arus and met Black." Abruptly he twisted out from between Matt and Keith and stood, the motion so sudden that the other two toppled into each other with startled exclamations. "I need some air."
Matt propped himself back up on his elbows just in time to see the door whoosh shut behind Shiro, his gut twisting with worry. He'd never known the other man to sound so harsh, especially to the younger paladins. Except during the bayard incident, he realized, remembering the way Shiro's face had twisted with fear thinly disguised as anger as he raised his voice at Pidge in a desperate attempt to divert the discussion away from his fears and traumas. Looked like they had, without meaning to, prodded another of the half-healed wounds the black paladin carried close to his heart.
Keith was looking at him, anxiety and concern plain as he chewed on his lip. Matt nodded in silent agreement. "I'll go talk to him." He said quietly, his voice carrying through the stunned silence Shiro had left in the wake of his sudden departure. He pushed himself back to his feet, wincing as his left leg took his weight, and slipped out of the room.
"Now, where did he go…" Matt muttered to himself, looking right and left in the empty hallway. Where did Shiro usually go when he needed to 'get some air'? Well, he'd start with the older man's usual haunts and work from there.
The black paladin's quarters were empty, as were the training deck, the sleepover lounge, the holodeck, and an isolated observation deck that Shiro had taken him to to look at the stars together. The ginger huffed in annoyance as he dropped down onto one of the couches at that last location, stretching his bad leg out in front of him. Shiro was nowhere to be found, and he couldn't think where else to look. Massaging his knee, Matt looked out the window. The sun was nearly down, but he could see the bright lights surrounding the buildings of the Garrison ahead of them, and smaller lights where gawkers still crowded at the fence line, kept at bay by patrols of soldiers.
He froze, then smacked himself in the forehead. "Fucking hell. I am an idiot."
As he stepped out of the main doors of the ship a few minutes later, a cool breeze whipped past him and he shivered. He'd forgotten how cold it could get here at night. Tugging his tunic tighter around his neck, he peered along the side of the ship until he spotted a small figure leaning against one of the Castle's massive engines.
Shiro didn't look up as Matt approached, staring off into the distance with his arms folded across his knees. Matt didn't press him to talk. Instead he sat down beside him, the ship sheltering them from the wind, and took a deep breath of desert air, laughing under his breath. How long had it been since he'd heard someone use the phrase 'getting some air' in the literal sense? Probably before Kerberos. They'd had no freedom of movement in the mines, and the rest of the last two and a half years he'd been aboard spacecraft, with only the vacuum of space outside the ship. "Feels damn weird being outside without a spacesuit." He muttered.
He'd intended the comment for himself, but Shiro gave a tired chuckle. "I suppose it would, for you. The Icebringers don't seem to make planetfall that often."
Matt shook his head in agreement. "Only for emergency repairs, usually. Even at Sh'ra H'ressnol they mostly load and offload via space elevator. More energy efficient, I'm told."
"I suppose it would be, considering how big those ships are."
They lapsed into silence again, Matt scooping up some sand and letting it fall through his fingers as he watched Shiro out of the corner of his eye. The coiled tension from the lounge was gone now, replaced by a sagging weariness and lines of sadness at the corners of his eyes that made Matt's chest ache just to look at him. He couldn't stand seeing him like this. Shifting closer, Matt leaned his head on Shiro's shoulder. "Talk to me, Takashi." He requested, voice gentle.
He felt the other draw in a long, shuddering breath, the muscular shoulder shifting under his ear. "Do I have to?"
"If you don't want to, I won't force you. But I can't help if I don't understand." He placed a light kiss to the armor covering his boyfriend's upper arm, a silent reassurance of his love regardless of what Shiro chose.
There was a long pause, the older man frowning uncertainly as he debated with himself. Finally, to Matt's relief, he spoke. "It's not an aspect."
Matt gave a small nod. "So you said." He commented, keeping his tone neutral. "Because you used it when you were still in the arena, right?" He had to admit, Shiro had a very good point with that. It was one thing to unlock aspects before they'd known what the aspects were, but at that point none of the paladins had even met their Lions yet. They weren't paladins then. So the aspects would have been out of reach of a desperate gladiator struggling to survive.
It was Shiro's turn to nod as he gazed out across the sand. "I've been thinking about it ever since the fight today. It can't be an aspect because I wasn't a paladin yet. And it can't have been the arm, because we got rid of that and apparently the ability is still there." His gaze dropped to his arm, and a vibrant pink-white glow crawled over the surface for a moment before the paladin extinguished it, clenching his fist tightly with pained sigh.
"So what does that leave?" He'd be the first to admit he didn't know that much about quintessence and how it worked, despite being surrounded by Alteans ever since the Icebringers had captured that prisoner transport he'd been on. He'd been a lot more focused on language, biology, and culture in order to fit in and make himself useful.
There was a strained silence, and when Shiro spoke again his voice echoed the quiet misery on his face. "Me. It leaves me."
Matt fumbled mentally for a moment, trying to keep up with that leap of logic and understand what the black paladin meant by that. "...I don't follow." He admitted at last.
Shiro sighed, a heavy gust of air. "Not an aspect. Not the arm. As far as we can tell from what memories I have and Coran's scans, they didn't do anything else to me besides...seeing how I worked." He nearly choked on the words, a shudder wracking his body at the memory, and Matt quickly wrapped a supportive arm around his boyfriend's shoulders. The black paladin had to suck in a deep breath to steady himself before he continued. "Which means the only possible source is me. Humans can't manipulate quintessence as far as we know, and I'm sure there'd have been some sign of it in the historical records if anyone had. Hell, maybe there is and we just don't know it. Ryou might know." He gave a wry, humorless laugh. "I'll have to ask him tomorrow. But then there's the fact that no other Human has ever been this far from Earth, or gone through wormholes or hyperspace, or fought in the Galra arenas and been repaired by Druids before. Who knows what that could have done to me."
"To us." Matt pointed out. "Some of those apply to me, too, and I have yet to be able to turn any of my limbs into a glowstick. Dad never did either." He added in a lower voice, fighting down the tightness in his throat that surfaced every time he thought of his father. "But I will concede that three is too small of a sample size to rule out any of those things as a cause." He lifted his head to study the profile of Shiro's face, the exhaustion and sadness that lined it and made it look older than his twenty-six years. "If it is you, then what's wrong with that?" He asked, all too aware that they were treading the edges of hidden wounds now.
"...I killed a lot of people, Matt." The words came slowly, unevenly, as if each one had to be dragged free of his chest before it could be spoken. "I don't even know exactly how many. I don't remember." Matt could hear the bitter self-recrimination, as though it were somehow Shiro's own fault that the trauma of his hellish year in captivity had caused him to block out most of the memories of it, but Shiro was speaking again before he could say anything about it. "But I do remember there were a lot. At least one per fight, sometimes up to a dozen if they had me against initiates."
Initiates. Initiates was what he and Shiro had been that day, when Shiro ripped Matt's leg open with an alien sword to save his life before throwing himself at the then-champion of the arena, Myzax the Destroyer. None of them had been intended to survive that day. And this kind, gentle man had been forced to be on the other end of that fight countless times.
"And I remember," Shiro continued, "that there were a lot more fights after I activated the arm than before. Testing. Seeing how well I could use it, how well their experiment worked. Or at least, that's what I figured it was. Hell, maybe it still was, if they weren't expecting me to be able to do that. I'd have been curious too."
Another silence fell as the former gladiator collected his thoughts, broken only by faint banging of metal from the direction of the Icebringer ships and a distant howl of a coyote. Guilt twisted in Matt's gut but he stayed silent, letting Shiro take his time finding the words he needed to bring his pain out in the open.
The black paladin shifted, sitting cross-legged with both hands resting in his lap as he stared down at his open palms. Concealed by gloves, there was no way to tell that one was flesh and blood and the other metal and wires. "So many deaths, Matt, because they were determined to push me until I couldn't go any further, until I broke and died, and I could fight better and longer and win more easily with the arm than I could without it. I thought...because the arm was theirs, at least some of those deaths were on their hands instead of mine. Every life that I couldn't have taken without it was their fault, as well as mine, because I refused to die and there were so many times that arm was the only reason I didn't. I hated them for it even as it saved my life. But now…"
"...now it feels like all that blood is back on your hands, and yours alone." Matt finished for him in a horrified whisper. A sick feeling curled in his gut at the realization. The other man had already carried so much guilt for the things he'd done in the arena, and now, faced with the discovery that his weapon of destruction hadn't come from the cruelty of the Druids but from inside his own body, he seemed about to break under the weight of it. The younger man wished it had been an aspect after all, because then at least some of the burden would have shifted to the Black Lion instead of the Druids rather than all of it sitting squarely on Shiro's trembling shoulders.
A single nod, a sharp jerk of Shiro's head, and a convulsive swallow as his hands clenched into fists again, the left one shaking while the right one did not, were all it took before Matt couldn't take it anymore. He twisted up onto his knees and threw his arms around Shiro, pulling him to his chest and ignoring the way the other stiffened at the unexpected touch. He curled around the larger man in a protective embrace, his body burning with anger at the abuse his beloved had suffered. In that moment he would have ripped apart every soldier in the Empire who had played their part in dragging Shiro into the arena again and again, every Druid who had treated him like an animal to be poked and prodded, and even the Black Lion for taking him as her paladin and forcing him back into a life of fighting and pain when he should have finally been free to move on and put his torment behind him.
"None of it is on your hands, Takashi. None at all." Matt whispered into the short, dark hair, fierce with anger on the other man's behalf. "Every time those bastards put two living people in the arena together and forced one of them to kill the other, that's on them, not on you." He felt Shiro shudder against him, fighting himself for control, and pressed onwards, determined to make sure the broken, battered man understood the truth of where the blame lay. "It doesn't matter whether you used a weaponized prosthetic, an aspect, quintessence manipulation, or even your bare fists. You were just trying to survive. Not wanting to die is nothing to feel guilty for, it's just part of being alive. Just like I didn't want to die that day in arena, and Katie didn't want to die in Trepan Kev. You didn't want to die, and if killing or dying are the only choices you were given, no one should ever hold that against you. I don't think anyone ever would."
Another shudder, then Shiro heaved against his chest as a ragged sob tore itself from his throat. Matt pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his boyfriend's head, rocking him gently. "You're not a bad person for living, Takashi. You're not at fault for doing what you had to do to survive. Those monsters in the Empire, they're the ones with blood on their hands. Not you. Never you." He felt Shiro shaking as he cried, and his own eyes burned in response as tears spilled down his cheeks. He hated this. Hated what Shiro had had to endure, hated the monsters who created such suffering for their own amusement. Hated the fact that Shiro was the kind of man who would always take blame onto himself, even as he loved him for it, and hated the fact that there was nothing he could do to take away his pain except whisper reassurances of his life's worth and hold him as he wept.
They stayed like that for a long while, Matt murmuring protestations of Shiro's innocence and hurling imprecations against the Empire alternately with each breath while the paladin's tears dampened his shirt. By the time the older man's sobs had subsided to uneven breathing the moon had risen over the desert, a thin crescent that didn't cast much more light than the stars. The ginger kept his arms wrapped around his boyfriend, supporting and protecting him with everything he had. Eventually, though, Shiro pulled away and Matt let him go, settling back to sit shoulder to shoulder with him against the cold metal surface of the Castle's engine in silent comfort. A blanket of heavy quiet settled over them both, still thick with sadness.
Gazing up at the sky, Matt wished from the bottom of his heart there was more he could do to heal the man he loved from the things he'd gone through. He felt so helpless sometimes, seeing Shiro hurting and being able to do so little to help.
Trying to distract himself, he scanned the stars, picking out the familiar patterns of the constellations. Sirius, bright as ever, and nearby, the red of Aldebaran in Taurus. With a practiced eye he traced the rest of that figure. "I spy with my little eye...a constellation with nineteen stars." He muttered, smiling sadly at the memory of the game he'd first played with his father as a small child to learn the constellations.
"Taurus."
Startled, Matt glanced over at Shiro, who looked back at him.
"Nineteen stars. That's Taurus, right?" The back paladin repeated seriously, then looked up and frowned at the sky overhead. "That or Perseus. They're the only ones with nineteen."
Matt blinked, then laughed. "No, it was Taurus I was looking at, you're right." It only took him a moment to locate the other constellation as well, before he continued looking for another one. "I spy with my little eye, a constellation with five stars." He stated, looking back up but continuing to watch Shiro out of the corner of his eye. He was pleased to see a slight quirk of the corner of the other man's lips as he hummed to himself.
"Pretty sure it's my turn, but...hmm…" He squinted upwards. "Auriga?"
"Nope." The ginger popped the 'p' cheerfully and grinned.
The black paladin raised an eyebrow at him. "Cancer, then." He stated firmly. "I spy with my little eye...a constellation with twenty-four stars."
Matt rolled his eyes. "Too easy, Takashi, only Eridanus has that many. Go again, since I went twice."
Shiro laughed. "Alright, you asked for it." He turned away to study the sky thoughtfully, and Matt was relieved to see a soft smile on his face in place of the guilt and exhaustion that had lined it earlier. He knew the other was a long way from letting go of that pain, but at least for the moment it was no longer at the top of his mind. "I spy with my little eye...a constellation with four stars."
"Aries." Matt pointed off into the distance.
"Nope."
"...Lynx?"
"Try again."
Matt narrowed his eyes at his boyfriend. "Monoceros, then."
"Not that one either." Shiro looked far too pleased with himself, his smile verging on an outright smirk.
The younger male frowned and scanned the visible sky again, but none of the others constellations overhead had four stars. "Well it has to be one of those three, doesn't it?"
Alright, he was definitely smirking now. "I was thinking of Crux, actually."
"Crux? You ass!" Matt socked his giggling boyfriend in the shoulder. "You can't even see Crux from the northern hemisphere!"
"Made it hard to guess, though, didn't it?" Shiro laughed, rubbing his arm and nudging Matt with his elbow.
Rolling his eyes, the ginger mock-scowled and swatted at the offending limb. "Alright, if that's the way you want to play it...I spy with my little eye, a constellation with ten stars!"
They played until they ran out of constellations to name and breath to guess with, laughter echoing across the open sand of the desert. Leaning his head on Shiro's shoulder once more, Matt sighed in contentment. "Remember when we used to do this back at the Garrison?" He asked quietly. "Those were probably some of the happiest nights of my life."
"Mine too." Shiro agreed, wrapping a protective arm around his shoulders, and the smaller male curled into the warmth of the older man's side. "Just you and me and the stars. I loved it." The black paladin heaved a deep sigh, head tilting down to regard him with a thoughtful expression. "But this...this is even better, I think."
"It is?" Matt asked, a trace of doubt creeping into his tone. Even after the emotional turmoil that had brought them out here in the first place, after the long, painful journey that they'd both taken between the last time they sat together on the roof of the Garrison and where they were now? How many times had Matt wished he could just erase the last two painful years for all of them? And Shiro somehow thought that despite all that, here and now was better than back then?
"Mhm." His boyfriend was smiling softly at him, and the warmth of his gaze sent a blush crawling across Matt's cheeks as it distracted him from his memories. "Because now I get to do this." Shiro whispered, and leaned down to capture the other's lips with his own.
Matt's eyes fluttered closed as he leaned into the kiss, his arms coming up to wrap around the taller man's neck and feeling Shiro's encircle his waist in return. The paladin tasted of metal and sky as the ginger ran a tongue over soft, dry lips, and then he saw stars as the other deepened the kiss.
When they finally pulled apart Matt was flushed and panting and he had to rest his forehead against Shiro's shoulder for a moment to collect himself. "W-Wow." he breathed. "Okay. Point made."
Shiro chuckled, laughter rumbling in his throat against Matt's ear. "You have no idea how many times I've wanted to do that over the years. Everytime we went stargazing together it took everything I had not to just pin you down and kiss you senseless right there under the milky way." His voice was low and husky and sent Matt's heart stuttering in his chest.
"We missed out on a lot of opportunities for starlit make-outs, then, because I would have had absolutely no problem with that." Matt laughed breathlessly. "Still don't, in fact."
A gentle touch to his chin lifted his head to find Shiro's lips less than an inch from his own. "Well then, I guess I better start making up for lost time." His boyfriend whispered, breath ghosting over Matt's lips and making him shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the cool desert breeze. Shiro's hands were firm on his cheek and back and sent warm tingles over his body.
"Definitely." Matt murmured. He closed the gap, then, pressing his lips firmly to Shiro's in an open-mouthed kiss. The black paladin was caught off-guard for a moment before returning the contact with a fierceness that made Matt gasp. His world seemed to narrow entirely down to fingers in his hair, shifting muscles under his hands, and a soft mouth fitting perfectly against his own like two matching pieces of a puzzle.
When they came up for air once more, Shiro's forehead rested against his own . "I love you." The black paladin's gaze was filled with love and naked awe and adoration as he gazed at him, so much of it that Matt was almost overwhelmed, and his voice was thick with emotion. "I love you so much, Matthew. I don't know what I could have possibly done to deserve you."
"I love you too." Matt murmured, stealing another chaste peck. "As long as there are stars in the sky and even when there aren't, I'll love you always." He cupped Shiro's cheek with one hand, running a thumb over one side of the scar on his face, then leaned up to kiss that as well. The mark reminded him of why they'd come out here in the first place.
"Takashi." He whispered. "I want you to look at me and listen very carefully to what I have to say, alright?" He gazed up at smooth, pale skin and dark eyes that seemed to reflect the stars above them, like windows into a vast cosmos inside this beautiful man that he loved so much. Those miniature voids fixed on him, and he took a deep breath. "I know you think that...this," he tapped Shiro's upper right arm with a meaningful look and heard the other's man's breath hitch in response. "Is something to be ashamed of, for the things you used it for. But it's-no, don't look away from me." He poked the paladin's nose when his gaze started to slide away. "Listen. It's not, okay? Because that arm is the reason you survived the arena. If you hadn't, you wouldn't be the Black Paladin now. How many lives have you saved wearing that armor, Takashi? Hell, how many lives did you save today alone? Billions, Takashi. All thanks to that arm, because it kept you alive in the arena long enough for you to escape. I'm not telling you not to grieve for those deaths." He added, cupping Shiro's cheeks with both hands and looking into eyes that shone with fresh tears. "If you didn't, you wouldn't be the man I love, and I wish from the bottom of my soul that you didn't have to go through what you did. But I, for one, will never stop being grateful, regardless of where that ability came from, because without it, you wouldn't be here with me now."
"Take the good with the bad?" Shiro whispered, lips twisting in a sad smile.
Matt nodded, wiping tears away with a careful brush of his thumbs. "Exactly. Good like lives saved and planets protected and prisoners freed. Good like Keith and Ryou getting their brother back and Katie having hope again." He leaned closer, brushing his lips over his boyfriend's for just a moment, soft and gentle and loving. "Good like you and me back on Earth, kissing under the stars just like we always dreamed of doing."
Another sharp inhalation of breath, those dark eyes wide and wet as they stared at him. Then he found himself wrapped in a bone-crushing hug that all but knocked the wind out of him. "You're right." A soft laugh in his ear. "Just like always." Shiro pulled back, wiping his eyes on the back of his gloves with a smile, a genuine, happy smile this time, spreading across his face. "I'll try to remember that."
"Trying's all I ask." Matt smiled back, taking Shiro's hand and lacing their fingers together as he settled back down against the side of the ship. "Come on. We've got the whole night ahead of us."